


And we will be who we are (And they’ll heal our scars)

by stjarna



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: 'cause apparently I go to them for all my fanfic title needs these days, (Some characters only mentioned), Agents of Hydra, Angst, F/M, Framework, Happy Ending(ish), Jemma's POV, Just a hint of bus kids mention, Possible Spoilers, Some bus kids, Some speculations based on BTS and promo pictures/material, Speculation, Title from "Not With Haste" by Mumford & Sons, angst with hopeful ending, open ending(ish), spec fic, star-crossed lovers?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-29
Updated: 2017-03-29
Packaged: 2018-10-12 16:38:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10495107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stjarna/pseuds/stjarna
Summary: It's been two weeks in the Framework. There seem to be worlds keeping Jemma and Fitz apart; their paths never having crossed it seems.aka Star-crossed lovers?





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AGL03](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AGL03/gifts).



> This is what happens when it's getting close to 1am but your brain is still in AoS mode and you're chatting with AGL03 on Tumblr and you mention that you had this idea for a fic a few days ago, and you give her a quick summary of your idea, and you end it with "But I don't have time to write it."
> 
> And then AGL03 goes: "Omg do it. Dooo ittt"
> 
> And you have no self-control, so when you wake up in the morning you start writing and waste half your work day until it's done.
> 
> Yep. That's how things like this fic happen.

She sits cross-legged on her bed in the small windowless room, staring at nothing and everything. It’s familiar. The brick wall. Her dresser. Her clothes neatly lined up in her closet.

It’s all been there before.

Except it all feels wrong.

It _is_ wrong.

Everything is twisted.

The world is upside down.

Hydra is at the top and S.H.I.E.L.D.

…

Well, S.H.I.E.L.D. is gone.

Never existed.

Hydra’s been in charge all along.

How?

Jemma had tried to figure it out. In the end, she’d decided on the now all too familiar answer: Radcliffe, AIDA, and The Darkhold.

Everything is twisted. Everything is upside down. Everything is wrong.

She isn’t Jemma Simmons, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., Level Orange, protecting the world.

She’s Jemma Simmons, member of The Resistance.

The Resistance.

She wants to laugh.

She knows it isn’t meant as such, but it seems like such a lame attempt at a Star Wars reference.

Coulson would probably have loved it.

But he wasn’t here. He wasn’t part of it.

He was teaching. High-school. Elbow patches and bad teachers’ lounge coffee. Voted “Most likely to bore you with dad jokes” every year since he started working at Alexander Pierce High School a good fifteen years ago. Never joined S.H.I.E.L.D. … Nor Hydra.

Everything is twisted. Everything is upside down. Everything is wrong.

The Resistance. They weren’t S.H.I.E.L.D. They weren’t making a difference. They were barely managing to stay alive long enough to try and shake up Hydra’s world order once in awhile.

They were led by an Inhuman Jeffrey Mace. Not super-soldier-serum-enhanced Mace. _Real_ and _actual_ Inhuman Mace.

He called himself The Patriot. In public, that is. Here, at their secret base, he is Jeff.

First names. To strengthen their bond. Instill a sense of family. Distance themselves from the heartless Agents of Hydra that rule this world.

A team that trusts is a team that triumphs.

“S’ppose we should be excited that at least _one_ thing stayed the same,” Daisy had joked when Jemma told her.

They’d only managed to meet once. Exchange burner phones.

Jemma longs to call her. Hear a familiar voice.

No, not a _familiar_ voice. She’d heard plenty of _familiar_ voices in the corridors of the secret base, on TV channels.

But she longs for a voice that’s not only _familiar_ but belonged to someone who _knew_. Knew everything like Jemma knew everything. Had seen the same horrors. Shared the same nightmares.

Jemma longs to call her. But they’d agreed that it was too risky. Emergencies only.

They couldn’t risk blowing Daisy’s cover. Not yet. Her life would be in danger if Hydra found out.

Hydra. Everyone besides herself who’d been logged into the Framework was either Hydra or a civilian.

Coulson a single, two-times-divorced teacher.

Mack a single-dad with his own car mechanic’s workshop.

And Hydra.

Daisy. Or rather Skye. Agent of Hydra. Level 7.

Partner and Girlfriend to Agent Grant Ward, Level 9.

Subordinates to Melinda May, Director of Hydra.

And then, of course, there was _him_ : Leopold Radcliffe, Head of Hydra’s Science and Technology Division.

He wasn’t officially an agent but came from the private sector. The son of Holden Radcliffe, CEO of Radcliffe Enterprises, Hydra’s sole tech supplier.

Daisy had only begrudgingly told Jemma of her encounter with the smug, ruthless billionaire engineer at Hydra’s headquarters, where Daisy had unexpectedly barged into a meeting between May and her young Scottish tech advisor.

Everything is twisted. Everything is upside down. Everything is wrong.

It had been two weeks in the Framework.

And with each minute that passed, with each moment spent by herself in her small windowless room that seemed so familiar and yet lacked his scent and his presence, Jemma could feel herself disappear, as if she were the sand in an hour glass, slowly seeping from a distorted reality into nonexistence.

Jemma stares at the burner phone in her hands.

I miss you. I miss everything.

It didn’t count as an emergency.

And yet she longs to hear Daisy’s voice.

Jemma’s eyes glaze over as the urge to dial Daisy’s number grows stronger and stronger.

She flinches when she hears a loud buzz from her nightstand.

Jemma turns her head and sees her real phone vibrating on the smooth surface.

She sighs and reaches for the device.

Anonymous. The caller I.D. is suppressed. An encrypted line.

She’d gotten plenty of calls like that since she’d woken up in the Framework.

Informants checking in with new intel—mostly from the science world in Jemma’s case, or Inhumans begging for help, for a safe haven.

She picks up the call but doesn’t say anything. Protocol. The informant identifies themself first.

Jemma listens. She can hear someone breathing on the other end, but the person remains silent.

Only speak when you hear the right code word. Make sure the call is safe.

Keep The Resistance safe!

Keep The Resistance strong!

A team that trusts…

“Jemma?” the person whispers into her ear.

She’d heard him say her name a million times before, and yet it takes Jemma a moment to recognize his voice.

It’s not that it sounds different. It’s not that it’s unfamiliar. It’s _so_ familiar that she could pick it out of a crowd of thousands.

But it’s the _last_ voice she’d expected to hear.

They’d never met in this world. He didn’t know her.

He was Hydra. She was Resistance.

Their paths had never crossed.

“Jemma, please say something.”

She presses her phone more firmly against her ear, trying to steady her shaking hand. She doesn’t reply. She’s not sure she even could speak right now.

“Jemma, please. I know you’re there. I can hear you breathing.” His tone is urgent and panicked and pleading.

Jemma places her free hand over her heart, feeling it hammer frantically against her ribcage.

“Jemma? Please!”

She blinks, trying to stop her tears from spilling over.

She hears him exhale sharply on the other end. “I _know_ I should be calling Lance with intel, Jemma! I _know_ you said we can’t see each other anymore. That it’s too dangerous, but—”

She listens for his nervous short breaths, while every muscle in her body tightens, while she holds her own breath, afraid to move, to exhale, to do anything that could make this moment stop.

“—I needed to hear your voice, Jemma. I… I need to _see_ you.”

Jemma bites her lip to stop from sobbing.

“Can you meet me at our usual spot?” he asks, and Jemma shuts her eyes tight, unable to stop tears from rolling down her cheeks.

“Please, Jemma? Please!”

Her mind is racing. Unable to formulate a clear thought, speak a clear sentence, come up with a reply.

“Please.” His voice is nothing more than a desperate whisper, like a dying man begging for a miracle before closing his eyes forever.

Jemma tries to breathe through her nose, tries to keep her words from tumbling out in a nervous stutter, but to no avail.

“Meet me in one hour at The Langham, apartment 204,” she replies, each word breathless and shaky.

She covers her mouth in a futile attempt to suppress the sound of her quiet sobs.

“The Langham?” She can hear the surprise and confusion in his tone.

“It’s safe,” she whispers.

“Okay. One hour. The Langham. Apartment 204.”

Jemma nods in confirmation, ignoring the fact that he can’t see the gesture.

“Be safe, Jemma,” he says quietly and Jemma can’t stop her lips from twitching into a sad smile. “I lo—”

But she hangs up, denying him to finish his sentence.

She drops her phone onto the bed. Her chest is heaving up and down and she presses both hands against it, trying to calm her breathing, trying to calm her panicked heart, trying to stop the stream of tears wetting her cheeks.

She reaches for the burner phone with trembling hands and dials Daisy’s number.

If _this_ didn’t constitute an emergency then nothing would!

The phone rings. And rings.

“Come on, come on, come on, come on,” Jemma pleads with the phone, the nagging ringing, the universe. “Pick up, Daisy! Please. Pick up!”

But the ringing continues.

Angrily, Jemma casts the burner phone onto the mattress where it bounces up a couple of times before lying still and silent.

Jemma takes a few deep breaths and scrambles off the bed. She grabs her jacket from the coat rack and swings the door open.

She rushes down the corridor.

“Jemma? Where’re you off to?” a familiar voice exclaims behind her.

Jemma turns around. “I’m meeting an informant.”

“Meeting? Now? It’s late! Can’t he-slash-she give you the intel over the phone? I thought that was the whole point of our snazzy encrypted lines?”

“No. I… I need to meet him in person, Lance.” Jemma’s eyes dart nervously from Hunter’s eyes to the ground and back.

The Brit draws in a slow breath and tucks his hands in his jeans pockets. “I thought you guys ended things? Too dangerous? Wasn’t that what you said? Romeo was supposed to call _me_ with intel from here on out?”

“Lance.” It’s nothing more than his name, but Jemma knows that he can hear her silent stream of pleas.

Hunter exhales sharply. “Where’re you meeting him?”

“The Langham.”

Hunter raises his eyebrows. “We just got the apartment at the Langham as a safe place a few days ago, Jemma. We don’t have _any_ security in place yet!”

“I know, Lance, but… it’s _so_ new, Hydra can’t _possibly_ know about it yet. So, it’s the safest place I could think of.”

Hunter bites his lower lip, squinting one eye as he seems to contemplate what to do next. “I assume if I offer to tag along, you’ll tell me no, correct?”

Jemma nods. “Correct.”

Hunter shakes his head slightly. “At least take a gun with you.”

A smile flashes across Jemma’s face. She nods in agreement and heads past Hunter down the corridor.

“And be careful!” Hunter calls after her. “Both of you! If you pull some kind of double-suicide crap, I’ll personally hunt down your ghosts and give them a good talking-to!”

* * *

Jemma’s on her feet before the sound of the second knock even reaches her eardrums.

She grabs the gun from the coffee table with trembling hands and walks over to the door.

Carefully, she looks through the peephole.

He looks nervous, turning his head left and right, searching the corridor for possible witnesses.

He rubs the back of his neck, while his eyes briefly dart in the direction of the door.

Seeing the familiar idiosyncrasy lets Jemma’s lips twitch into a smile almost by reflex.

Her hand trembles when she reaches for the doorknob. She opens the door slowly, her eyes afraid to look at him, even though his double in size at the sight of her, the corners of his mouth pulling into a wide smile.

“Jemma!” The way he says her name sounds like a sigh of relief.

He takes a small step forward and Jemma notices his hands reaching up, hesitantly, in slow motion, as if his brain is struggling to decide what his fingers are and aren’t allowed to touch.

Jemma stares into his blue eyes. They’re familiar. Fixed on her.

She had told herself that this wasn’t him. This wasn’t Fitz. This was Leopold Radcliffe and he wasn’t real; his world wasn’t real.

She had told herself to keep her distance.

She had told herself to keep her cool.

He takes another step forward and Jemma has yet to move, has yet to step back, has yet to maintain the distance she’d wanted to uphold.

His eyes gaze at her. They’re familiar. So familiar. So warm. So longing. So full of love.

He takes another step forward.

Her gun drops to the floor.

She moves.

Her hands move.

Forward.

Upward.

Until her palms feel his prickly stubble.

Until her fingers pull him closer.

Until her lips meet his and his lips meet hers.

His arms wrap around her waist.

Her hands are curled around his neck, pulling him into the apartment.

He stumbles forward, one hand frantically reaching back to close the door.

She steps forward, pushing him against the door.

Her fingers roam through his hair.

His sides are shaved too short and the hair on top feels sticky from too much product.

But his lips taste like home.

Everything _feels_ like home.

The way his beard tickles and scratches her sensitive skin as he places wet kisses against her lips, against her neck.

The way his fingers comb through her hair, pulling her face closer to his.

The way he rests his forehead against hers.

The way their breaths mingle as they stand in front of each other, chests heaving with excitement and fear and relief.

It’s familiar. It’s home.

“I can’t do this anymore, Jemma.” His lips are so close to hers that she can feel his breath as he speaks. “I can’t.”

Jemma opens her eyes halfway and notices a thin trail of tears on his cheeks.

His eyes are closed and his fingers apply gentle pressure on the back of her head, as if he were trying to pull her closer and closer until their bodies could merge and become one.

“They’re going ahead with the eradication program, Jemma. Director May asked me for an update on the virus that the Bioweaponry Division has been working on.”

His voice is shaking and Jemma can feel his body tremble. “I can’t be a part of that, Jemma. I _can’t_.”

He leans his head back slightly, still holding her face in his palms, his watery eyes pleading with her. “I know you guys need the intel, Jemma. I _know_. But I _can’t_. I _can’t_ be a part of that anymore. I can’t keep pretending and supplying them with—” He shakes his head. “I _can’t_!”

Little by little, the puzzle pieces of their Framework avatars fall into place.

Little by little, the realization hits her that Leopold Radcliffe is not whom she’d thought; he’s—in fact— _Fitz_ in more ways than not.

She wants to say something, but her mind is void of words.

His lips brush against hers. Softly. Lingering for a moment as if he were trying to draw strength from their connection.

His thumbs caress her cheeks and his chin quivers as more tears leave their watery trails on his face.

“Please, Jemma! Don’t push me away again. I _can’t_ do it anymore. I _can’t._ _Please_ let me come with you. Bring me back _home_ , Jemma. To the Resistance. Let me help _there_. Let’s work _together_. Let’s _be_ together! Don’t make me go back there! _Please_.”

Jemma can’t help but smile; a sad smile mixed with tears and hope and fear and longing.

Her fingers glide over his temple, behind his ear, down his neck.

She leans closer and kisses him and his lips respond tenderly, softly.

It’s familiar. It’s home.

“Fitz.” His name escapes, barely more than a whisper, and yet it feels like a cry for help all the same.

He looks up. “What?”

It’s not shock. It’s not even surprise. It’s as if he simply wasn’t sure what she’d said.

Jemma smiles, allowing her hand to caress his face, her fingers to glide over his stubble.

She lets out an involuntary whimper, shaking her head. “This world is so messed up.”

He chuckles sadly, tucking away a strand of her hair. “We’re quite the pair of star-crossed lovers, aren’t we?”

Jemma can’t help but laugh at his attempt to lighten the mood. She draws in a shaky breath and places her palm firmly against his cheek, tilting her head slightly.

“No! No, we’re _not_!” she says with determination. “I _refuse_ to let our story end in tragedy.”

She shakes her head. “The universe might be trying to rip us apart, but I won’t let it!”

“Then we won’t let it,” he whispers, looking at her with warmth and comfort.

Tears shoot to Jemma’s eyes. “There’s so much I have to tell you, Fitz!”

He chuckles briefly. “Could you start by telling me why you keep calling me Fitz?”

Jemma smiles, her fingers absentmindedly drawing little patterns across his forehead, his cheeks, his nose, as if trying to commit every part of him to memory.

She looks into his blue eyes. “Because it’s your name.”

The corners of his mouth quirk up briefly, as if he’d been told a secret he’d longed to hear since the beginning of time.

“You’re Leopold Fitz. And you don’t belong here. And I will bring you home. I will bring you home to _our_ world, our _reality_. And _nothing_ will keep us apart!”

He leans closer, his eyes fixed on her, only fluttering shut the moment their lips meet.

Jemma keeps her eyes closed when he breaks their kiss, but she feels his breath on her lips; his energy radiating from him, mixing with her own life-forces.

“Bring me home, Jemma,” he whispers against her lips.

She closes the narrow gap between them, kissing him through the hopeful smile playing on her lips.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks @dilkirani for the beta!


End file.
